According to earlier this year, the same dissident group reportedly sent balloons carrying near 2, 000 USB drives filled with songs by North Korean song Lim Young-wooong, as well as other K-pop and K-dramas, into the North on May 10.
North Korea is very concerned about its citizens getting exposure to the South’s thriving popular lifestyle.
Kim Yo Jong made fun of South Korea last week by disparaging its balloons, accusing them of exercising their right to freedom of expression and warning them to react substantially if more kites are discovered.
As then-president Moon Jae sought relationship with the North, South Korea’s congress in 2020 passed a law prohibiting the sending of anti-Kim flyers across the border.
The law was overturned last year by the Constitutional Court as an unnecessary restriction on free speech, and there are now no constitutional grounds for the government to halt the balloons, according to Yoo Jung-hoon, an attorney, citing the court’s ruling.
There is no legal justification for the government to force civic groups to stop, he said, despite the possibility of political criticism that such actions may not lead to increased life for North Koreans.
Advertising War
In response to the trash-carrying bubbles, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol totally suspended a 2018 tension-relief military agreement with the North.
The South will be able to continue life fire drills and launch speaker propaganda campaigns along the North’s border.
Pyongyang is enraged by the channels, which have recently threatened to launch artillery attacks against the loudspeakers without turning them off.
Pyongyang is likely to send ( more ) balloons, according to Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, as Kim Yo Jong predicted they would react proportionate to anti-North leaflets from the South.
The North may respond physically to the North’s response by starting loudspeaker broadcasts along the border next month.
In the past, the two Koreas ‘ blatant advertising has boiled over in dramatic fashion.
Following a number of vociferous condemnations of a prior plot plan, Pyongyang formally cut off all established military and political communications with the South and destroyed a deteriorating inter- Asian contact business on its side of the border.
The most recent exchanges come as economists warn Kim that it is testing weaponry before sending them to Russia for use in Ukraine. South Korea’s defense secretary claimed this trip that Pyongyang has already sent about 10,000 containers of arms to Moscow in exchange for Russian dish knowledge.